Cafe Culture + Insitu shine at MID14's The Project

September 1st, 2014

Whilst the term ‘inception’ relates to the establishment or starting point of an institution or activity, CC+I, DKO Architecture and Hot Black have found interest in the internal workings of design language and conceptual systems.

Sophie Safrin, Design Director of Hot Black, explains that “at some point in a designer’s life, we have wondered how an idea is generated and how it somehow takes on a life of its own to form a concept. When asked to develop a concept based around the notion of inception, we felt that the initial moment of an idea is certainly a moment in time.

“It was the strands of ideas that infiltrate or influence the original conceptual moment where we found great interest in our own design process along with our furniture partners Café Culture +Insitu. This creative journey, whilst congested at times, stops us all in breaths of clarity – where we look to either our foundations or above for the moment in which the life of design has made a mark.”

Armed with this interpretation, the team elaborated a concept for an installation space that greets visitors to the shared showroom space and allows them to follow the journey of Cafe Culture + Insitu‘s merger and evolution.

The design is defined by 3,000 three metre strands that connected floor to ceiling in the showroom’s garage space, forming delicate partitions that funnelled visitors through a simple labyrinth as they approach destination. Each strand represented a possibility springing from the moment of inception, and where they connect to the floor they created symbols that echo the CC+I brand identity, such as the ‘+’, which represents the merger of the two brands Cafe Culture and Insitu. At each focal point a visitor was confronted by the brand’s identity, below, and items which represent stages in the brand’s evolution, above.